Rumraket wrote:I thought you meant besides the example of chloroquine resistance. You are claiming to have found examples of adaptations that could not have evolved, right? Then showing an example of an adaptation that evolved seems rather self-defeating in my view.

At these point I am simply establishing the fact that at least some “benfitial steps” require more than 1 mutation.

Rumraket wrote:In the argot of chemical kinetics, getting beyond the deleterious mutation is the "rate-limiting step."

That is not quite relevant; any significant number of neutral mutations in path would limit evolution (feel free to do the math by yourself)

Rumraket wrote:Because YOU are the one claiming to be in possesion of an argument that should cause us to doubt the veracity of the evidence that has already been collected.

I would say that you are the one who has to provide the step by step path that would produce an eye or a flagellum, and justify that the path is achievable with Darwinian evolution. After you do that any objector would have to show that at least some steps are not achievable.

Rumraket wrote:The evidence from the past history of life from comparative genetics, comparative anatomy, chronology of embryological developments, from the fossil record, from observations of molecular change in experiments, to observations of change of wild populations, from change due to domestic breeding and artificial selection and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

Most of the evidence that you mentioned would prove that universal common ancestry is true, as far as I know Behe (and I) grant universal common descend.

The rest bits of evidence show that some diversity is achievable by Darwinian evolution, which is also something that Behe and I would grant. The disagreement is o on whether if Darwinian evolution can account for all the diversity of life.

Rumraket wrote:No, we are affirming that we don't have reason to think there isn't one given all the evidence we already have. This goes back to Darwin himself....,

Well and I am affirming that there are good reasons to think that for example detecting light and reacting when light is detected are independent and codependent systems. This is to say that you can´t get both systems with a single mutation and each system by itself is useless without the other.

There are also good reasons to say that it would have been statistically unlikely to have a neutral mutation that would allow the organism to detect light, survive genetic drift, and get a second mutation that would allow the organism to react positively when light is detected and survive genetic drift.

Just to be clear what is exactly your point of disagreement?

1 that each system would have been useless without the other

2 that you can’t get both systems with a single mutation

3 that it is statistically unlikely to have a path that involves too many neutral mutations

Rumraket wrote:Rather it is YOU who is demanding of US that we prove a negative to you. All YOU have to do is find a SINGLE example of something that genuinely could not have evolved. Instead, you are demanding that WE prove to you that there are NO such examples. You want of us to prove that no barriers exist out there, an impossible task.

The number of possible paths is “potentially infinite” even if I show that a path would have been impossible you could always say that there might be an other path. I cant falsify a potentially infinite number of paths.

I can’t prove ether that you can’t get a system that can detect light and a system that causes a reaction when light is detected could have not been accrued by a single mutation, because the number of possible mutations is also potentially infinite. You are the one that would have to provide an example of such mutation.

Well anyway all I can do is:

Show that a significant number of neutral mutations in a path would we statistically unlikely and therefore constitute a barrier and that there are good reasons to assume that a significant amount of neutral steps would have had to occur if the eye or the flagellum would have had evolved by Darwinian mechanism.

To me this is enough to justify my skepticism towards the claim that all (or most) of the diversity of life is a result of Darwinian evolution.

And this is not even a big deal, many “non creationists” share the same skepticism, the issue is widely being discussed in journals

Rumraket wrote:I thought you meant besides the example of chloroquine resistance. You are claiming to have found examples of adaptations that could not have evolved, right? Then showing an example of an adaptation that evolved seems rather self-defeating in my view.

At these point I am simply establishing the fact that at least some “benfitial steps” require more than 1 mutation.

For what purpose? That is a trivial statement.

leroy wrote:

Rumraket wrote:In the argot of chemical kinetics, getting beyond the deleterious mutation is the "rate-limiting step."

That is not quite relevant; any significant number of neutral mutations in path would limit evolution (feel free to do the math by yourself)

I'm not disputing the math, I'm disputing the claim that we know of such barriers to the evolution of any species or biological entity or structure.

Give an actual concrete example of something that had to evolve while requiring "a significant number of neutral mutations" and show that this entity could not reasonably have evolved.

leroy wrote:

Rumraket wrote:Because YOU are the one claiming to be in possesion of an argument that should cause us to doubt the veracity of the evidence that has already been collected.

I would say that you are the one who has to provide the step by step path that would produce an eye or a flagellum, and justify that the path is achievable with Darwinian evolution.

leroy wrote:After you do that any objector would have to show that at least some steps are not achievable.

Then do that.

leroy wrote:

Rumraket wrote:No, we are affirming that we don't have reason to think there isn't one given all the evidence we already have. This goes back to Darwin himself....,

Well and I am affirming that there are good reasons to think that for example detecting light and reacting when light is detected are independent and codependent systems. This is to say that you can´t get both systems with a single mutation and each system by itself is useless without the other.

What are these systems that are useless without the other that you are talking about? Give examples.

leroy wrote:There are also good reasons to say that it would have been statistically unlikely to have a neutral mutation that would allow the organism to detect light, survive genetic drift, and get a second mutation that would allow the organism to react positively when light is detected and survive genetic drift.

That chain of events is literally what happened in the Long Term Evolution Experiment with E coli, when aerobic citrate transport evovled (a neutral potentiating mutation happened, survived genetic drift, and later a second beneficial gene duplication put the citrate transporter under control of an operong active with oxygen present, leading to the ability to transport citrate into the cell and thus be metabolized). So your imagined statistical unlikelihood, isn't.

Just to be clear what is exactly your point of disagreement?

1 that each system would have been useless without the other

2 that you can’t get both systems with a single mutation

What are "each system" here? Give examples.

leroy wrote:3 that it is statistically unlikely to have a path that involves too many neutral mutations

How many is too many? Given that you manifestly thought that something which happened in the LTEE, is "statisticallly unlikely", which I take to mean you think that such an event could not possibly have been expected to happen in the history of life, then I think your intuitions about what can or can't happen aren't worth anything.

Your hunches about what is "too many" needs some clarification. Stop talking in vague generalities and give specifics.

leroy wrote:

Rumraket wrote:Rather it is YOU who is demanding of US that we prove a negative to you. All YOU have to do is find a SINGLE example of something that genuinely could not have evolved. Instead, you are demanding that WE prove to you that there are NO such examples. You want of us to prove that no barriers exist out there, an impossible task.

The number of possible paths is “potentially infinite” even if I show that a path would have been impossible you could always say that there might be an other path. I cant falsify a potentially infinite number of paths.

You have confused yourself. We aren't talking about mere possibility, we are talking about probabilities.

Your argument is that certain combinations of mutations are very unlikely, and if such combinations of mutations are required to evolve X, then it is unlikely that evolution is the explanation for X.

Your job is then to find examples of X where such very unlikely combinations of mutations are required. Should you find such a thing, our job would then be to find either an alternative pathway to X, or show that you are wrong when you say it is unlikely.

If we were to just declare that there are alternative pathways to X, you could reasonably ask for evidence of this. And if we could not provide any evidence that implies that there were such alternative pathways to X, you could then reasonably say that there is no good evidence that X could have evolved.

leroy wrote:I can’t prove ether that you can’t get a system that can detect light and a system that causes a reaction when light is detected could have not been accrued by a single mutation, because the number of possible mutations is also potentially infinite. You are the one that would have to provide an example of such mutation.

I don't have to provide an example of something I don't see any reason to think is how sight evolved.

To make sure you understand, I think both the proteins that react to light (opsins, which evolved from GPCRs, G-protein coupled receptors), and the biochemistry whereby a cell produces a genetically controlled reaction to the light stimulus(or another external stimulus) were both in place before sight evolved. That it is a modification of a series of duplications of an already existing number of systems.

leroy wrote:Well anyway all I can do is:Show that a significant number of neutral mutations in a path would we statistically unlikely and therefore constitute a barrier and that there are good reasons to assume that a significant amount of neutral steps would have had to occur if the eye or the flagellum would have had evolved by Darwinian mechanism.

Then do that. And please show the actual math this time. How much is a significant number? Because whatever you thought it was up above, it happened in the LTEE.

leroy wrote:And this is not even a big deal, many “non creationists” share the same skepticism, the issue is widely being discussed in journals

Please give examples where evolutionary biologists think that a significant number of neutral steps had to occur for some entity X to have evolved, and show how they are then skeptical that it could have evolved because it would be "statistically unlikely" and thus constitute a barrier.

@leroyI think with respect to your last point, that you might have confused two different subjects here.

It is certainly true to say that there is a very real debate about the relative contributions of genetic drift, and natural selection, to the diversification of life. How much of this evolution owes to genetic drift at the molecular and morphological level, and how much of it owes to natural selection?

That is still very much debated between people who come down at different degrees of support spanning the full spectrum from "natural selection had a strong influence on everything" to biologists who say genetic drift has been a much bigger factor.

But you seem to be saying that there is "widespread" doubts about whether evolution could even have taken place if genetic drift has been a major component. That's just not true.